THE Tembari Children's Care (TCC) Inc is a day care facility at ATS Oro Settlement, 7-Mile, outside of Port Moresby, PNG. To date, it takes care of more than 200 former street children - orphans, abandoned and the unfortunate - by serving them meals twice a day, and providing them early education. Assistance - food and money - is sent by supporters who find merit in the services we provide to these children. At The Center, they are family. For all of these, we need support that is sustainable.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

God always provides: A surprise donor for Saturday feeding program

By ALFREDO P HERNANDEZA Friend of Tembari Children

IT was Thursday night and I was a bit uneasy.

I only had a cash of K150 (US$52) in my wallet and 15kg of banana prawn sitting in a freezer at Our Yes Grocery at Gordons.

The cash and prawn were supposed to go into the ingredients that I would be cooking on Saturday for the Tembari Children’s special lunch. The banana prawn, by the way, was a donation from High Energy Co Ltd, a fishing company based in Port Moresby.

Having cooked for them special Saturday lunch since last January without fail, I knew that the available cash won’t be enough to cover all what I would cook on that day.

The four Saturdays of the month – first, second, third and fourth – are already covered by permanent feeding sponsors who chip in K150 each for the materials.

For this Saturday feeding - the first Saturday of October – the fund came from permanent sponsor Nanga Medical Center owned by Rey and Lulu Lambo.

However, this amount won’t be enough to feed 97 children at Tembari Center. The soaring cost of food items in Port Moresby is truly heartbreaking

So, I would look for a counterpart sponsor – in short, a co-sponsor – who would chip in another K150 to beef up the feeding fund.

But as of Friday morning, I haven’t found the missing co-sponsor. Or maybe, I did not try harder looking for one.

I took it in stride, anyway, deciding to revise the menu I had prepared for Saturday into something less costly to cook.

In short, I have to cut corners to make both ends meet, so to speak.

On Friday after lunch while at work, I had a visitor – Mae Odocayen, the sister of the late Dr Lu Lagayan, who recently passed away in the Philippines after being in coma for more than a month despite being looked after by two medical facilities in Port Moresby.

Finally, after a long delay, Dr Lu was brought home to Manila for the much-needed medical attention. But all was late and that her doctors finally gave her up. She died peacefully at home.

Mae came to see me regarding an ad booking with The National that she wanted to come out on Tuesday, December 5.

The ad placement will announce the names of all the people who helped the Lagayan-Romulo family paid for cost of Dr Lu’s medical expenses while in Port Moresby and also to announce the 40th day of mass offering for her at St Mary’s Cathedral in downtown Port Moresby.

Having arranged for the payment with our advertising cashier, I came back to Mae who was at the reception lobby and gave her the payment invoice.

Then, just before she took off to go back to CE Hardware at Grodons where she works, she handed me an envelope.

“Kuya Freddie, that’s for your feeding program this Saturday …” she said. “Kuya” is Filipino for “big brother”, the Filipino’s reference to a person his/her senior. The female counterpart is “ate, pronounced as ‘ah-teh’”, or “big sister”.

It was a big surprise. I had already given up hope in finding the counterpart money.

I was unable to ask Mae how she learned of my feeding program. But I had assumed that she heard of it from Dr Adel Lagayan, Dr Lu’s husband, who had also helped my Saturday feeding program in the past.

I thanked my Lord for the surprise money and thank Him again because my networking with people I know and don’t know continuously makes wonder for the Tembari Children.

Back in my work station upstairs, I opened the envelope. It yielded two K100 notes!

No kidding!

Since I have already decided on what to cook the next day, which cost about more than K250 (US$87), I used the extra money to buy other small items of bits and pieces that are needed for the day-to-day cooking at The Center.

Every time donations would come from people whom I did not expect to give because I never asked them for it, I felt goose-bumps crawling all over me.

So to all individuals and entities who had help and those who continuously help the Tembari Children, may the God Lord bless you everyday for your good hearts.

As Filipinos fervently believe, what you had given to the needy despite your bleeding over it would come back to you ten-fold.

THE BLOGGER

ALFREDO P HERNANDEZ, A Friend of Tembari Children. Blogger APH came to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 1993 to join The National newspaper as one of its pioneering journalists. Working as Executive Sub Editor, he has remained with the daily, now the country’s No. 1 newspaper, up to these days. He has been a journalist since his university days in Manila back in the late 60s. APH’s involvement with the Tembari children began in January 2010 after he discovered them at a Christmas party for the city’s 500 unfortunate children held at the Botanical Garden in Port Moresby. That day, he was chasing a story for The National, which happened to be that of the unfortunate children in the city. His self-appointed job for Tembari children composed of orphaned, abandoned, neglected and unfortunate children is to look for people and groups who could provide them food, money, health services and facilities necessary to create positive changes in their lives. This job is difficult, but what the heck …!

(Our sponsored Saturday lunch for the 200 Tembari kids costs only K250.00 per sponsor (we usually have two), which covers a special meat (fish or chicken) dish, veggies, steamed rice and cordial drink. The Saturday lunch needs at least two sponsors. Some had given more, allowing us to give the kids a generous heap of the day’s lunch. A rare bonus to the sponsors, along with the bricks they earn each time, is that I personally cook the dish, giving it a personal touch. And as they earn a brick, each of our benefactors also earn a passage into the heart of the Tembari kids, which is also a prepaid ticket to Heaven.)